


You Tell Me to Hold On

by Myzic



Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Not Beta Read, We die like..., Whump, Whumptober 2020, hrrrrrgghhh, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myzic/pseuds/Myzic
Summary: She’d hung up. He cursed, stomach curdling in dread and sewage and all the thoughts that whirled in his mind, swirling and lying slick atop his palms and his knuckles.Ben called back, right hand pressing buttons furiously as his left held the wheel and veered left dangerously towards their complex. It rang through and he swore. He called back, heart jumping faster than each ring and intermittent beep of the call, but it rang out again. After that he stopped and focused on the turn of the road, on the steering wheel, wet with sweat beneath his hands.He pulled into a spot, not the one that came assigned to their unit, and barely took the time to shut off the engine before he was whipping out of the car, legs pumping faster than he could remember in his life. Benten didn’t remember going up the stairs, but he felt how his legs trembled and hands shook as he turned the handle to their apartment.Or,Sarah Steel got the right twin.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956226
Comments: 10
Kudos: 61





	You Tell Me to Hold On

Benten waved at Ms. Young and Alicia, keeping his smile relaxed, both to reassure Alicia and stop the anticipation bubbling in his stomach. He had really meant to head home as soon as his lessons were finished, but Alicia’s mom hadn’t shown up on time and couldn’t exactly leave a five-year-old sitting on the front steps of the Oldtown Studio.

He fumbled with his keys, pushing them into the scratched lock of Ma’s car. His car. She didn’t use it enough anymore for him to call it hers anyway, so really it was his car. It wasn’t much of a claim, with the grey polyester that crackled with the sound of peeling plastic covers that only half-hid the alcohol stains on the front seats. It was a miracle the thing had survived so long as to make its way into Ben’s possession as it was. A miracle Ma hadn’t crashed it years back.

Now, it was his, round wheels and all. This clunker was a survivor, and that made it something worthwhile, stains, or not.

He accelerated out of the parking lot, foot pressing down the petal a couple notches closer to the floor than he might dare on a normal day. Last time Juno had been by, he’d had to facilitate a screaming match between him and Ma, which had ended in shattered bottles and a sulking, sullen brother for the rest of the night. When he wasn’t arguing with and persuading Ben to move out, that was. 

Sometimes he wondered if Juno provoked her on purpose. It was an ugly thought, filled with the kind of doubt he knew he carried down to his marrow, the same kind that made Sarah scream into the phone at the landlord and snip at their neighbours the first few times they’d come by. It made sense if you turned your head a little and squinted, scrubbed out the colour, and looked at the world the way Juno Steel did. Ma had a tendency to blow her top faster than others, and so did Juno, she was always quick to turn to her medication, whatever that may be for the day, and nowadays, Juno tended to too. She was always sputtering sparks and acid at the world that had done her wrong, and well, so did Juno.

He knew Juno saw nothing but the worst of her in himself sometimes, and Benten couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what he saw when he stormed in, full of righteous anger and fury. Himself. All the worst parts, accusational and angry and quick to violence. It wasn’t true of either of them, of course.

Even if he couldn’t see it himself, Benten knew, Juno wasn’t going to become their mom. He was too— strong-willed was the wrong word— determined for that. He already knew, saw it everyday in the glint in his eye when he’d punched their elementary teacher, the same one he saw when he’d seen Juno, ragged duffle in hand, out to leave their little apartment for good, had known it since they were tiny. Super Steel, out to change the world, put a little good in the all-too bad Hyperion Police Department, do something worthwhile with his life. 

_ He _ was the one with the future. Benten was more certain that there was a bright tomorrow waiting for Juno than he had been of anything, and he would be there to remind him when he couldn’t see it himself.

Tonight was going to be good, but if he wanted to take Juno out on the town for a celebration, it needed to start well. Which meant he had to try and head Juno off before he made it up the stairs and reacted to Ma, who would then react to him. Like a bad chemical reaction, the kind Mick had been banned from their sophomore labs for in their last year of chem. Explosive and extremely volatile.

That wasn’t going to happen tonight, though, Ben thought, as he eyed the clock which told him he was still fifteen minutes away from their agreed-upon meeting in ten minutes. He was supposed to meet Juno at the apartment, even though he’d tried to insist on meeting Juno at his new place instead. He’d refused, pointing out that the apartment was closer to the Pour and Floor anyway, which was a hard point to argue against, but Benten had given it a good effort.

He just had to get there first, and tonight would be a good night. Mick always cheered Juno up, though he always hid his grudging grins behind an array of good ol’ fashioned one-liners. Also, Benten had been given the chance to be obnoxiously, vocally proud of his brother tonight, and Super Steel wouldn’t have the grounds to deny it because even he couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it. Being fast-tracked through the HCPD academy within a year was unheard of, and no matter what Juno might say otherwise, Benten had seen enough, lived through enough of Juno’s blood and sweat to know that it had been earned. The last few months Juno had been home, he’d barely been able to lift his arms in the morning after long nights, hands trembling as he spooned stale cereal into his mouth. Ben planned to seize the opportunity and gush pride at every unknowing passerby, and the Lesser twin was not going to stop him.

All Benten had to do was give him one good night, and he planned on following through.

His comms rang, pausing the classical music he was listening to as the ghostly steps of his next routine for Oldtown Studio’s production stopped playing in the back of his head. Ben accepted the call with a flick of his fingers, absently humming the rest of the melody as he did.

“Ben?” There was Ma’s voice, tinny over his unit, and Ben felt a small drop in his stomach at her voice. Had Juno already gotten there? “Your brother stole my damn pills.”

“What? Ma, why would he do that?” Juno sometimes went a little overboard with the booze, but they both knew taking Ma’s pills was akin to leaving the windows open during a dust storm. “Is he even there yet?” No answer.

“Where’s Juno, can you put him on the comms?” his voice sounded tense even to his own ears. Sarah could be violent when she was in a bad mood, and though both of them had gotten pretty good at dodging her bottles, he still wanted to hear Juno’s angry, yelling voice. “Ma? I said  _ put Juno on the comms _ .”

The voice that answered was an angry one, but not the lowered tenor of his own voice reflected back at him, the shared tone that was always rougher from Juno, “He was getting mouthy. He had it coming, Benzaiten.”

“Ma, where’s Juno, what happened?” His heart started thumping, fear pushing down the car pedal until it was almost flat with the floor.

“I said he took my damn pills and started getting mouthy at me,” her voice was rising with Ben’s and he could feel her reacting to his panic, but he couldn’t get himself to calm down, “so I shut him up.”

“What does that mean!? What did you do to Juno, Ma!” Benten shouted into his comms shooting past cars he weaved around at the last second and tried futilely to push his pedal down more, though it was already level with the ground. 

“I— I. When are you coming back, Benzaiten? You should come back,” her voice seemed smaller than he was used to hearing it, and that more than anything scared Ben. Sarah Steel was not a quiet, soft-spoken woman and though a lot had changed about her in the last fifteen years, this was not one of them.

“Tell me what happened!” he yelled, pulling into the exit way to quickly to be safe, and felt the car tires skid on the highway, “Let me hear Juno, where is he?!”

“Don’t yell at me!” Her voice sounded wet, incensed and feral, but oddly wet, “He’s gone, okay? Is that what you wanted?! He’s gone!”

Ben gasped in a breath all at once, oxygen filling his lungs so quickly he felt dizzy, “What did you do?! You have to tell me what happened!” There were a few moments of silence from his comms, moments filled with nothing but the static of their connection and the racing of Ben’s thoughts and heart.

“Ben, I—” A longer pause cut off what she was going to say. Then, a beep sounded from his comms, and it echoed in the cold cavernous space in his head, in the brief silence of the car. She’d hung up. He cursed, stomach curdling in dread and sewage and all the thoughts that whirled in his mind, swirling and lying slick atop his palms and his knuckles.

Ben called back, right hand pressing buttons furiously as his left held the wheel and veered left dangerously towards their complex. It rang through and he swore. He called back, heart jumping faster than each ring and intermittent beep of the call, but it rang out again. After that he stopped and focused on the turn of the road, on the steering wheel, wet with sweat beneath his hands.

He pulled into a spot, not the one that came assigned to their unit, and barely took the time to shut off the engine before he was whipping out of the car, legs pumping faster than he could remember in his life. Benten didn’t remember going up the stairs, but he felt how his legs trembled and hands shook as he turned the handle to their apartment. Standing scared on the other side of a door was a feeling he’d gotten used to, being raised by Sarah Steel, but this time he was terrified, fear like iron bars closing in on his head, his heart, his lungs.

The hinges on the door, rusted and stained, registered before their apartment did. They swung open, and the carpet was flaxen, the walls dented from a few too many careless movements, thrown fists, and there was Juno.

He was lying sprawled on the ground, arms lying awkwardly, bent at his sides. He had on a black button-up, the only nice shirt he owned, Ben knew, and a scorched black hole straight through his head, leaking blood like tears down his face, barely touching the scar across his nose, and in a ring around his head in a perverted halo. 

Ben was only half-aware of what came out of his mouth, the feeling of his knees hitting the ground beside Juno, “No, nononono, Juno,  _ Juno, _ please, you— this can’t—” he put his hands on his cheek, cradling it with a hand while the other went to his neck.

It didn’t matter, his hands were shaking too hard to take a pulse. That wasn’t the reason he couldn’t find one, though, he already knew, but he pretended for a second before reality came crashing down on him in so many shattered glasses and splintered pieces of a home.

“Ju—” his voice broke, “no.” Benten clutched Juno’s shoulders, grasping him in a hug he couldn’t return. “No.” His hands were cold, unbearably, irrefutably so. They’d both run hot, but Juno was a furnace, and his hands scorched Ben’s unmistakably when their fingers clasped, or he held him in an embrace for longer than a few seconds.

“He had them,” and in the space of a second, the scope of Ben’s world expanded until he could feel the cool blood soaking his knees through his pants and the cold voice of Sarah Steel. “I know he did, he had too.” 

She was sitting on the living room chair. Her hair was knotted around her face like she hadn’t brushed it today. In her lap, sat a blaster, silver, nicked and dented— familiar. Her face was mostly impassive, save the hint of anger that screwed up her eyebrows the way he’d grown up seeing.

Benzaiten didn’t recognize her. But he did. He knew her rage like the back of his hand, like the bruises on his torso now. That wasn’t his mother, or it was, but at some point, something monstrous had taken Sarah Steel and taken her place. Maybe it had replaced her slowly, eyes first, then her ribs, her hands, her bones. He wondered when it had happened, how he had failed to notice.

Juno had been seeing her for what she was the whole time.

“It doesn’t matter if he had them,” he didn’t say what he was thinking.  _ You’re a monster _ , or  _ how could you do this _ ? She wouldn’t understand.

  
Ben held Juno’s hands in his. “ _ Fuck _ ,” he cried. No coming back from this one Super Steel. He put his face in his hands, warm where his brother’s were not, would never be, and sobbed.

**Author's Note:**

> I only cried a little while writing this! ;)
> 
> I headcanon that both Steel twins thought that the other was the one with the ‘real’ future.  
> Thanks to Rory for the fic idea! Happy Very Early Birthday!
> 
> Come scream at me @themagicmistress on Tumblr


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